1. Get OrganizedIt's all to common for musicians to just start mixing before they gets things organized. This is fine if you have have five tracks but if you have upwards of fifteen you will want to take some basic steps to get you going in the right direction. One of the most obvious but overlooked aspects is properly labeling the tracks. Take time to label "Snare" "Overheads" and so forth. Also take advantage of color coding in your DAW if it has that feature. It's incredibly useful and won't know how you lived without it prior.

2. Listen To Tracks IndividuallyWhy? It's a good way to deal with purely technical issues such as glitches, background noises, and awkward edits. Does that cross fade sound good when soloed?Additionally, It gives you an opportunity to find little moments of inspiration that may be lost in the mix. Take for an instance a split second guitar string bend. If you catch that then you can go ahead and automate just that section later on to make sure no misses some of that magic.

3. Listen and PlanBefore you start touching faders and adding plugins just listen to what you have. Then get an idea of what you want to happen. Do you want the second chorus to be more intense then the first or do you want to outro to fade out. Take some time to produce a blueprint of what you want to happen. If you know what you want getting there will be that much easier.